In yet another example of how the nation’s waste management methods are absolutely unsustainable, a long-running debate between two waste disposal companies and a South Carolina environmental regulatory agency regarding the shipping of 300 railcars containing about 60,000 to 78,000 tons worth of radioactive dirt from New Jersey to South Carolina landfills is beginning to heat up yet again.

The waste at issue would be coming from a housing site in Sayreville, New Jersey that is currently being redeveloped and “cleaned up” for future purposes. The soil was originally recovered from an industrial cleanup site by the Raritan River, located south of New York City.

While it is claimed that the majority of the dirt contains “natural radiation,” SC regulators claim that radiation has been “technically enhanced” and has become more concentrated while at the site in New Jersey. This would, of course, cause the material to become more radioactive.

Yet Sayreville Seaport Associates, the company currently housing the contaminated soil, is still determined to outsource its own radioactive garbage to the Lee County, South Carolina dump that sits off of Interstate 20.

Unfortunately for Sayreville, the Lee County garbage dump, which is operated by Republic Services, is not designed for radioactive industrial waste – it is only designed to hold household garbage. Indeed, even the household garbage that it currently holds has become somewhat of a local issue regarding the overwhelming smell caused by the landfill.

With that in mind, it is fortunate that some South Carolina environmentalists and some state lawmakers are opposing the new dumping effort.

Do you want to see where this country is headed? If so, don’t focus on the few areas that are still very prosperous. New York City has Wall Street, Washington D.C. has the federal government and Silicon Valley has Google and Facebook. Those are the exceptions. The reality is that most of the country has been experiencing a slow decline for a very long time and once thriving cities such as Gary, Indiana and Flint, Michigan have become absolute hellholes. They are examples of what the rest of America will look like soon. 60 years ago, most Americans were decent, hard working people and there were always good jobs available for anyone that was willing to roll up his or her sleeves and put in an honest day of work. But now all of that has changed. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities have shut down and millions of jobs have left the country. Cities such as Cleveland, Baltimore and Detroit were once shining examples of everything that was right about America, but now they stand out like festering sores. The “blue collar cities” have been hit the hardest by the gutting of our economic infrastructure. There are many communities in America today where it seems like all of the hope and all of the life have been sucked right out of them. You can see it in the eyes of the people. The good times are gone permanently and they know it. Unfortunately, the remainder of the country will soon be experiencing the despair that those communities are feeling.

The following are 12 hellholes that are examples of what the rest of America will look like soon….

#1 Gary, Indiana

Gary, Indiana was once a great industrial city.

Today, it is one of the ten most dangerous cities in America, and the population has fallen by about 50 percent.

Frequently rated one of the ten most dangerous cities in the United States, Gary once boomed with jobs and opportunities but now faces the acute difficulties of America’s growing rust belt, with 22 percent of families in the once-great city now lying below the poverty line.

This modern American ghost town began life as home for workers at the United States Steel Corporation plant until economic competition from abroad forced a 90 percent job cut.

It is hard to describe what is happening to Gary without using the word “depressing”. You can watch a great video that shows what Gary, Indiana looks like these days right here.

This is what happens when industry leaves and there are no jobs. Gary has become a wasteland and there is essentially no hope for a turnaround.

The following is how James Kunstler described what he experienced when he traveled through Gary, Indiana recently….

Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn’t worked out well.

Sadly, Gary is far from alone. There are a whole host of other formerly great U.S. cities that are degenerating into hellholes as well.

#2 Chicago, Illinois

There is something truly special about Chicago. Most of America loved the Bears of the Walter Payton era, the Bulls of the Michael Jordan era and the Cubs of the Ernie Banks era. Chicago is also known for great architecture and great pizza.

But these days “the windy city” is becoming known for other things.

The murder rate in Chicago is up 38 percent so far this year, and the recent spike in violence in the city has made national headlines.

That means that those officers are outnumbered 500 to 1, and more gang members pour into the city every single day.

The escalating violence in Chicago was detailed in a recent article in the Telegraph….

“This is a block-to-block war here, a different dynasty on every street,” said a dreadlocked young man heavily inked in gang tattoos who calls himself “Killer”.

“All the black brothers just want to get rich, but we got no jobs and no hope. We want the violence to stop but you ain’t safe if you ain’t got your pistol with you. Too many friends, too many men are being killed. We don’t even cry at funerals no -more. Nobody expects to live past 21 here.”

The victims and killers are mainly black males aged between 15 and 35, often with gang affiliations – but not exclusively. A seven-year-old girl, Heaven Sutton, was buried this month after being gunned down at her mother’s street sweet store. And last week, two girls aged 12 and 13 were shot and badly-wounded as they walked home from a newly-opened community centre.

If you are thinking of moving to Chicago, you might want to think again.

#3 Detroit, Michigan

I have written repeatedly about Detroit because it is a perfect example of what the rest of America is going to look like soon.

Once upon a time it was regarded as one of the top manufacturing cities the world had ever seen, but today it has become a total hellhole.

There are very few decent jobs available, poverty has exploded and crime is everywhere.

If you can believe it, 53.6% of all children in Detroit are living in poverty, and only 25 percent of all students in Detroit graduate from high school at this point.

And as I wrote about recently, justifiable homicide in Detroit increased by a whopping 79 percent during 2011, and the rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is now approximately 2200% above the national average.

Is it any wonder that you can still buy a house for $100 in some areas of Detroit?

The truth is that many areas of Detroit now resemble a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Perhaps that is why one team of investors actually wants to turn some of the worst areas of Detroit into a zombie theme park….

Derelict areas of Detroit face being taken over by hordes of ‘flesh and brain-eating zombies’ if an ambitious business plan takes off.

Stockton is one of the ten most dangerous cities in America and it recently made national headlines when it declared bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, as spending on law enforcement has declined it has given the criminals a lot more room to operate in Stockton. The following is from a recent Business Insider article….

The city has cut more than $90 million in spending over the past few years, specifically in its police department. The city has cut over one quarter of its police jobs, which has led to a “surge in murders,” and has created an “emboldened criminal element” in the city. According to police spokesman Joe Silva, the city has had 87 murders since the start of 2011, 29 of which have already occurred this year. In contrast, there were 35 murders in 2009 and 48 in 2010. With six months left in the year, there have already been more murders in the city since the start of 2011 than the two-year stretch of 2009-2010.

A while back in Stockton a billboard was put up with the following message: “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying off cops.”

If anything, even though government officials in states like Illinois and New Jersey are attempting to outlaw guns completely, the public outcry has been deafening, with each attempt met by protests and solidarity from individual rights and gun advocates all over the country.

It’s clear that the majority of Americans support their inherent right to bear arms. But, even though the strategy of attacking our second Amendment is wholly unpopular and failing miserably, misguided government officials are beginning to explore ever more novel ways of circumventing the US Constitution and Second Amendment altogether.

This latest legislation would add a surtax to every box of ammunition sold, and if allowed, would set an alarming precedent that effectively threatens our ability to utilize a firearm for its intended purpose.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, in a bill introduced earlier this month, proposed a 2 percent surtax on ammunition. The proceeds would go toward a “high-crime trauma center grant fund,” which would then send the tax money to trauma centers in “high-crime areas.”

The idea is to begin to offset the high cost of gun violence. Mark Walsh, campaign director for the Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told FoxNews.com that cost often ends up being shouldered by these urban trauma centers.

…

“(The money would go) into communities here in Illinois that have been damaged with gun violence,” he said. “I think it’s a legitimate way to pursue funding.”

“We aren’t causing the problem. They are,” Pearson said. “It’s an attack on firearm owners and their rights. … They think that because we like to target shoot and hunt, we’re bad people, and we should pay for all the ills of the city of Chicago.”

Since gun owners in Illinois have to have a special ID card which requires a background check to obtain, Pearson said those committing crimes of gun violence aren’t likely to be paying much into the proposed tax fund.

“They’re not buying their ammunition (legally). They’re not paying any part of the tax. They’re getting their stuff illegally,” he said.

He estimated a typical box of ammo runs for about $25 in Illinois, meaning the average tax per box would be about 50 cents.

Supporters of the new legislation argue that proceeds from this small tax will be used to help the greater community. In this case, we would argue that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The risks of an abusive government having the ability to essentially set the price of a product through taxation is a scary proposition. Anytime government has ever identified a new good or service to tax, if it is allowed to do so, it unabashedly continues to raise those taxes in perpetuity.

Gasoline, alcohol and cigarettes are key examples of this. In New York, for example, you pay more in taxes for a pack of cigarettes than the actual cigarettes. This same model will be introduced to ammunition if the sycophants in our local, state and federal government aren’t stopped.

You can be assured that if legislation like this isn’t stopped swiftly and unequivocally, it will spread like a cancer throughout the rest of the country.

Like cigarettes and booze, ammunition, it will be argued, is a danger to public health and the general welfare, and as such, will require high taxation to cover the adverse social impact it causes. It’s only a 2% tax today, but once the idea takes hold without protest, it will without a doubt lead to massive price increases, leaving many without the ability to exercise a right that is a pillar of the US Constitution.

[NaturalNews] New Jersey is one of the few U.S. states where the vast majority of its residents are not forcefully medicated with fluoride chemicals via their water supplies. Only about 20 percent of New Jersey residents, in fact, are exposed to fluoride in water, which makes it the fourth least fluoridated state in the country. But state legislators in the Garden State are currently trying to change this by passing legislation that would mandate all public water supplies in the state to fluoridate their water.
Sponsored by Democratic State Senators Joseph F. Vitale (http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/BIO.asp?Leg=175) and Loretta Weinberg (http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/BIO.asp?Leg=260), NJ Senate Bill S-959, the New Jersey Public Water Supply Fluoridation Act, and its identical companion legislation, Assembly Bill 1811, would require “the fluoridation of all public community water systems in New Jersey.”

According to the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), a health freedom advocacy group, the New Jersey legislature has been working towards enacting these new fluoridation laws without telling the public or seeking appropriate public input. And outcry from those who oppose the legislation — the NJ League of Municipalities, the NJ Sierra Club, the NJ Business and Industry Association, the citizens’ group No Fluoride New Jersey, and even a number of local water companies and utilities across the state have all objected — appears to be going unheard.

“Since fluoride’s benefits are topical, it makes no sense to swallow fluoride and makes even less sense to put fluoride into drinking water when fluoridated toothpaste is available to everyone,” said Paul Connett, PhD, executive director of FAN and co-author of the bookThe Case Against Fluoride. “Not only does this unfunded mandate completely strip away all local control of fluoridation, but requires local taxpayers to fund the estimated $5 billion start-up costs and the annual $1 billion cost to maintain the practice.”

Fluoride is a toxic waste byproduct known to damage the brain, vital organs

Besides failing to make an appropriate public announcement about the bills, legislators are also withholding the fact that the toxic fluoride chemicals being proposed for water supplies is not natural, and is actually a waste byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer and aluminum production industries. As a result, those who drink it are exposed not only to fluoride’s toxic effects, which include brain, thyroid, and other organ damage, but they are also exposed to arsenic, lead, radionuclides, and various other toxic chemicals that typically contaminate it.

More than 25 published papers have shown that fluoride chemicals reduce IQ levels in children, and many people across the U.S. today have dental fluorosis, a condition where teeth become mottled and brittle, as a result of overexposure to fluoride. It is also a drug that has never been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which means its deliberate addition to public water is an illegal form of practicing medicine without a license or proper prescription.

There is also no way to properly dose consumption of fluoride when added to water, as individuals of all ages and sizes consume varying amounts of the toxic chemical. This means that individuals with compromised immune system or health problems, as well as babies, are at an extreme risk of fluoride poisoning just from routine exposure to fluoridated water in their everyday lives.